***SPOILERS*** It at first looked like defense attorney Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, really put his head into a bear trap. Perry takes on a murder case that the defendant Clint Eastwood like action hero Robert McCay, Joe Penny, was seen by some 40,000,000 people, much like the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, on live TV gunning down night talk show host Steve Carr played by Alan "Thick of the Night" Thicke. It was McCay who appeared unannounced on the Steve Carr show and as if he was being mind controlled, by aliens from outer space or the CIA, pulled out a .357 Magnum, his movie star trademark, and blew Carr away! Even though though he had no evidence , since there was none, to get McCay off Perry took on the case on the theory that this all, the shooting on Carr, was supposed to be a prank with Carr himself participating in it. What went wrong was that someone put live bullets in McCay's prop .357 Magnum when he wasn't looking that was meant to kill Carr! What Perry Mason now has to find out is who switched the fake bullets with live ones and why did he or she want Carr dead!
Things looked so bad for both Perry and his client Robert McCay that the D.A who never won a case in banging heads with Perry in he courtroom Michael Reston, David Ogden Stiers, now feeling curtain that he can finally put one over on the great Perry Mason like a shark smelling blood in the water rushed from his place of business in Denver Colorado to New York City to prosecuted the case against McCay! D.A Reston like all of us watching didn't realize that Perry had an ace, or better yet a royal flush, up his sleeve that he was going to spring on him at the conclusion of the film. It's a long shot but it had to do with the missing and unaccounted five minutes that the gun that McCay shot Carr with was left unattended. it was during that critical period that someone put live bullets in it that, in knowing the prank that Carr & McCay were about to pull off, ended up taking Carr's life hours later.
***SPOILERS*** Perry with the help of his leg man private eye Paul Drake Jr.William Katt, together with supermarket tabloid reporter Michelle Benti,Wendy Crewson, tracked down this critical piece of information a film clip that had the actual killer of Steve Carr in it! It was that clip that had the killer break down in court and admit his or her crime. But we has another surprise coming in that Carr's killer was not who we thought he was but who Perry knew all along. And in that just waited for him to come clean so that this whole confusing mess of a movie could finally come to closure: To the court the friends and members of Steve Carr's family as well as most of all the by now totally confused and befuddled audience watching it!
Yes Perry Mason is a great defense attorney who could very well have gotten Adolph Hitler or Jack Ruby off in he were to defend him in a court of law but here what he did was just too much for us watching to take. Not that he got Robert McCay off on a murder rap that was witnessed live on TV by over 40 million people as well as those in the Steve Carr audience. But that he was more then willing to take on the case in the first place! That without him at first knowing the facts in the case, which Drake Jr & Michelle Benti had yet to dig up, and with his reluctant client McCay anything but cooperative with him!
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